Posted by David Kopel:
Bloggers agree: "Government-run" tag is worst threat to health care bill:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_02-2009_08_08.shtml#1249680682
This week's National Journal poll of political bloggers asked the
bloggers "How serious is each of the following challenges in selling
health care reform?" Bloggers of the Left and the Right agreed that
"Government-run health care" was the biggest challenge, and that "Too
costly" ranked second.
The challenge that I ranked as greatest, "Nothing for the insured,"
came in last place on the Left, and next-to-last on the Right. My
rationale:
"The real problem is that rather than getting 'nothing,' the
already-insured will end up worse off, and more and more of them
are realizing that. Tens of millions of them will get pushed out of
their current private insurance, end up stuck in the public
'option,' and have to live with British/Canadian-style rationing by
queue -- in which survival rates for cancer are much lower, people
wait for many months for operations, and every doctor-patient
transaction is controlled by the government."
Question 2 was "What's the bigger political problem facing President
Obama right now?" Seventy-five percent of the Right, and 33% of the
Left, thought, "Concerns about his handling of the economy." The
majority of the Left voted for "The prospect Congress won't enact
health care reform this year."
I voted for the economy, but saw it as linked to health care: "The
latter is helping to cause the former. The irresponsible, reckless,
pork-filled, wasteful, government-centric deficit spending spree in
the so-called 'stimulus' has raised justifiable concerns that a health
care system run by the same crowd of people will raise rather than
lower costs, and will not be effectively managed."
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